Inside Croydon

Croydon’s longest-serving MP, Steve Reed OBE, is the latest cabinet member to be named in the mounting scandal around the new Labour government’s apparent endless capacity for accepting gifts and freebies from big-money donors, industry interests and lobbyists.

Reed, now the MP for Streatham and Croydon North, has been accused of being “wined and dined by the very family of firms he must now take to task”.

Tories, environmental groups and a TV celebrity go on the attack as £130m cuts to rural budgets are next in Labour’s austerity plans.

Croydon MP Steve Reed OBE could be the real reason that his party leader, Keir Starmer, has been banned from Jeremy Clarkson’s new pub in Oxfordshire.

The former Top Gear presenter and Sunday Times columnist opened The Farmer’s Dog in Asthall just before the August bank holiday. After the success of his Amazon Prime series, Clarkson’s Farm, it seems Clarkson’s Pub is the obvious follow-up.

If you were hoping to plan any trips by train for the October half-term week – forget it.

There will be no train services on parts of the railway and London Overground network across a large part of south London for seven days at the end of October, as Network Rail conducts works to upgrade its signalling system.

Services to stations affected will include London Bridge, Crystal Palace, West Croydon, Gipsy Hill, Beckenham Junction, Streatham, Mitcham Junction, Carshalton, Sutton and Wimbledon.

Why were Labour MPs threatened with losing the party whip, and what does it mean? ANDREW FISHER on how Croydon’s MPs voted over the removal of pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payment

The decision to cut the Winter Fuel Payment for 9-out-of-10 pensioners has proved controversial for Labour, has seen MPs’ inboxes deluged with correspondence, while a petition raised by charity Age UK attract half a million signatures, in what has become the first major skirmish for Keir Starmer’s new government.

Transport for London has today started a consultation on three bus routes, which is likely to affect journeys in and around Streatham and Morden, and will see the end of the 118.

Under TfL’s “proposals” (which mean it is what they intend to do, come what may…):

Route 118 would no longer run

Route 45 would directly replace route 118, operating between Denmark Hill and Camberwell Green and Morden

Bus stops between Brixton Hill and Clapham Park no longer served by route 45 would instead be served by route 59 if it were to change as proposed

Network Rail is to carry out track repair works in the Crystal Palace area for nine days from August 24 until September 1, with Thameslink and Southern disrupted.

Passengers are being advised to “plan ahead” during the “major track upgrade”, which will include the Bank Holiday weekend.

The works are part of a plan to “reduce train delays and improve passenger experience”.

Five sets of switches and crossings and nearly one mile of track will be replaced by Network Rail.

From August 24 until September, there will be no Southern services at these stations:

A man from Streatham has been jailed for seven years after an investigation into the importation and distribution online of gamma-Butyrolactone, the drug GBL.

Ricardo MacQueen De Aguiar, 36, of Hopton Road, Streatham, was sentenced at Croydon Crown Court last week for importing the Class-B drug GBL, possessing and distributing GBL and two counts of assault on an emergency worker.

He was also sentenced for breaching a previous Sexual Harm Prevention Order and issued a further order for seven years.

De Aguiar pleaded guilty to all counts.

Three people trapped by fire were rescued to safety from a house in Streatham Park in the early hours of this morning – the Fire Brigade remarking at the difficulty of their operation because of the way the three-storey building had been converted into three flats.

Ten fire engines and around 70 firefighters were called out to tackle a fire on Aldrington Road, off Mitcham Lane, where a ground-floor flat was “completely destroyed in the blaze”, according to the London Fire Brigade.

CROYDON COMMENTARY: After his second election campaign in five months, PETER UNDERWOOD, who stood for the Green Party in Croydon East, reflects on how the number of votes cast ought to be a warning to the two larger parties

We knew there would be some shifting around in Croydon following the boundary review that increased Croydon’s constituencies from three to four (or, strictly, three-and-a-half, as we share one with Lambeth).